Consumer taste and fashion have dictated a desire for mass-produced, but well-fitted garments, which are distributed and sold throughout the United States. Large national retailers of clothing generally contract with a plurality of clothing manufactured to produce uniform standardized clothing, which is essentially identical from batch to batch, even though manufacturers by different entities. These manufacturers in turn produce the clothing at their own plants, or in many cases, subcontract the production of the garments to manufacturers based in the Far East, for instance, in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea.
In the retail clothing industry clothing is typically suspended from hangers at the point of purchase. Such hangers are often inexpensive ship-on types and under prevailing garment-on-hanger programs, the garment is shipped from the manufacturer to the retailer while suspended from a hanger. Traditional garment-on-hanger pant and skirt hangers utilize spring clips that are manually pushed into a locking position to secure the pants or skirts to the hanger. In these hangers, referred to as “pinch grip hangers,” a steel-retaining clip is manually clamped over a clamshell garment grip to secure the garment.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,759,480 to Duester et al. discloses a pinch grip hanger having an auxiliary bar. A portion of the garment, which is suspended from the pinch grips, is draped over the auxiliary bar. The auxiliary bar is typically fabricated from a metal wire and is pivotally disposed in the body of the hanger. However, the auxiliary bar can also be integrally formed with the body of the hanger. The draping of the garment over the auxiliary bar reduces the vertical space required to display a single garment, thus making the display of the garment compact and allowing display of a greater number of garments in the same display space.
Although, the auxiliary bars of the prior art have their advantages, they require specially manufactured garment hangers to either pivotally retain them therein or to be integrally molded therein. Therefore, pinch grip type hangers must be manufactured in both a version without an auxiliary bar and in a version with an auxiliary bar or capable of supporting an auxiliary bar.